Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Today, schools look to the sun as a viable energy resource to cut into increasing power costs. [Columbus Dispatch]

Records continue to fall during Chicago’s mid-March heat wave, as temperatures reached 80 degrees for the fifth straight day, and could continue the “extreme and unprecedented” streak through Wednesday. [Daily Herald]

Scores of United Kingdom environmental regulations are to be slashed under government plans to be announced later today, the Guardian has learned. [Business Green]

Record high temperatures were reported across upstate New York on Sunday. [AP]

Authorities lifted an evacuation order for a Colorado town of 300 late Sunday night after firefighters contained most of a wildfire on the state’s northeastern plains.

President Barack Obama’s administration is expected to throw its weight behind U.S. solar panel producers on Tuesday in their battle against lower-priced imports from China that they say threaten the future of the industry in the United States. [Chicago Tribune]

Collapsing natural gas prices have yielded an unexpected boon for North Dakota’s shale oil bonanza, easing a shortage of fracking crews that had tempered the biggest U.S. oil boom in a generation. [Chicago Tribune]

New Jersey Democratic lawmakers announced last Thursday their revived attempt to pass a bill that would re-enter the state into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. [Daily Targum]

The developer of a small wind farm in western Massachusetts wants state regulators to rework last month’s Nstar merger settlement, saying its project is as “worthy” as Cape Wind and would help Gov. Deval Patrick reach his lofty green-energy goals. [Boston Herald]